CLEAN SWEEP AT BEACHES AFTER MARSHMALLOW FUN

On Friday morning, a group of volunteers at Ocean Beach gazed at a marshmallow wasteland — the sticky remains of some Fourth of July festivities.

Armed with trash grabbers and reusable cloth bags, the cleanup crew worked from dawn until late morning to collect soggy, sand-covered leftovers from the previous night’s traditional marshmallow fight.

The haul also included cigarette butts, plastic bags, food containers and flip-flops stuck in marshmallow muck.

The annual Morning After Mess event — cleanups at four local beaches — attracted people who wanted to help their communities, earn school credit or atone for their transgressions the night before. It was organized by the Surfrider Foundation in coordination with San Diego Coastkeeper and I Love a Clean San Diego.

During last year’s cleanup, more than 500 people picked up 191 pounds of recyclables and 2,607 pounds of trash, said Surfrider chapter coordinator Haley Haggerstone.

And in 2011, participants collected 255 pounds of recyclables and 1,982 pounds of trash.

On this Independence Day, Karen Beers had hung out in Ocean Beach, so she decided to help restore the site to shipshape condition Friday.

“Yes, I do confess to throwing a few marshmallows,” she said. “However, I picked up five bags so far, so I feel I’ve put back into the community. This is my community. This is my beach. I was envisioning myself later on walking here to soak in the sun, and I didn’t want to see all these marshmallows melting.”

At Mission Beach, the cleanup crew collected thousands of cigarette butts and other small items such as bottle caps, gum wrappers and drinking straws.

Natalie Roberts, community events planner for I Love A Clean San Diego, said the Clean Beach Coalition has been trying to reduce the volume of trash by placing 200 oversized trash and recycling bins at local beaches and encouraging the public to bring reusable coolers and food containers instead of disposable ones.

Stephanie White, 14, and her friend Megan Johnson, 13, joined 200 other volunteers at Mission Beach for the cleanup. They wanted to get a head start on community credits they’ll need for high school next year, said Megan’s mother, Rebecca Johnson.

In a statement perhaps never before uttered by a 13-year-old girl, Megan said: “I just like to clean up stuff.”

At Oceanside Harbor, Melanie Murnane of Carlsbad gathered fishing debris with her daughter Mattie Murnane, 13, and their friend Nicole Blue, also 13.

“We did the jetty. There was a ton of fishing wire,” Murnane said.

Nearby, Tom Kumura of Vista helped his son’s Key Club remove a buried beach blanket. “We do a lot of beach cleanups,” said Michael Kumura, 16. “We just want to give back.”

Although “Morning After Mess” has four sites, the epicenter was at Ocean Beach, where the marshmallow fight has been a long-standing tradition. Archival news stories cite its origins as a friendly feud between two rival Independence Day parties in the 1980s. Over the ensuing decades, it attracted more participants, spread to surrounding beaches and once reportedly drew riot police.